Sport Business Master Class Challenge Mentoring

On Wednesday 3 February Albion in the Community, the Community Trust for Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club, invited four local colleges to attend a business master class day at the University of Brighton’s Falmer Campus.  The colleges included Albion in the Community Scholars, Sussex Coast College Hastings, Worthing College and City College.

Second year Sport Business Management BSc Student James East writes about the event: “As second year sport business management students we were invited along to act as mentors for the Key Stage 5 students who as part of the day were completing a unit of their study. Our role was to work alongside an Amex volunteer to assist the college students with ideas and provide our knowledge of business in order to help them to complete the tasks they were set.

“Each college was split into two groups of four or five and each had a University of Brighton student as a mentor and an Amex representative. Each group was given a number of tasks in relation to the overall objective of the day. These included carrying out a SWOT analysis for Brighton football club in terms of the club as a business and then draw up a market segmentation on who the group believed the club’s different markets are and the types of people the club are targeting in order to increase revenue.

“As mentors for the group with the Amex volunteer, we were able to recommend ideas for the SWOT analysis and provide some examples of the different markets Brighton and Hove Albion football club would be targeting. However, the real aims of the exercises were to engage the college students and to enable them to come up with their own ideas and express their knowledge.

“After these two tasks were carried out there was an opportunity for the colleges and us as volunteers to have a tour of the stadium. This included a tour of the executive boxes and discussions about how the football club uses the boxes in order to enhance revenue, and then a tour of the changing rooms, before going down to pitch side.”

“After lunch, the overall objective of the day was for each college was revealed. They were tasked with coming up with an App that would improve the match day experience for fans attending the Amex Stadium to watch Brighton. This could have been a ticketing app, a travel app, half time ordering refreshments app, anything the groups could come up with that would improve customers experience whilst attending a game. The colleges then split of into their separate groups again in order to generate ideas.

“My group came up with an idea of creating an app that would act as a programme, digital wallet, a downloadable ticket and provide statistics on players who were in the starting line-up for the game. Each college had to decide which of the two groups would present their idea to a guest judging panel. Unfortunately my group were unsuccessful and were not able to present their idea for their App.

“The winning group of the Sport Business Master Class Challenge were from Sussex Coast College Hastings, who had a similar idea of creating a match day programme app with a digital wallet concept and provide match statistics and player statistics. The panel made up of Executive Director, Martin Perry, current first team player, Leroy Rosenior and ex- player Guy Butters voted that this was the best idea for an App.

“So, many thanks to Albion in the Community for organising the day, the Amex volunteers who attended, and the colleges themselves who worked extremely hard through the day. It was a very enjoyable day for us university students and something that was very successful and run very well by Albion in the Community.

“The day was a good opportunity to be able to showcase my knowledge around sports business organisations. The day has also allowed me to be able to reflect on the process and gain an idea of what more I could do in order to enhance my knowledge and if I were to do the day again I could provide greater assistance for the college students.

“Being involved in a day like this is good because it allowed me to explore first-hand how such a business operates daily in order to be successful. Understanding some of these aspects which were discussed and analysed today whilst on the trip will be beneficial for me on placement at Equity Travel and gives me greater appreciation of the objectives of a sports business.”